Chapter Text
Dad’d always said that Mecha Man was more than a suit.
‘Mecha Man,’ he’d said, ‘is hope. Powers can keep the city safe well enough, but it’s people’s souls that we carry, too. Mecha Man makes them feel strong. Courageous. People look at us and expect to see a guardian.’
He’d leaned forward, backlit by the fireworks outside and hand resting on Robert’s head, and said, ‘if I ever fall, it’ll be up to you to keep that hope alive. Do you understand?’ Robert had nodded, all of six years old and already stupidly self-assured, like all children are. Dad had made being Mecha Man sound like more than being a superhero — like it was noble and dignified, armor gleaming in the sunlight and free of any muck that might mar the silver paint, all shining chrome and glorious battle.
Dad had died that way, too. Dignified. Blood bubbling from between his teeth, eyes rolling and jaw locked tight to keep from screaming, bullet buried in his chest. A bulwark against evil. Less dignified when the second bullet ripped through his heart, and lesser still when Shroud blew his brains out in the middle of Robert’s living room.
The rest of the Brave Brigade used say that Robert had gotten lucky. Lucky that Shroud hadn’t seen him hiding behind the couch, lucky that Shroud hadn’t decided to take the Astral Pulse before he’d fled the house, lucky that Shroud hadn’t burned the whole damn place to the ground, lucky that Shroud hadn’t decided to hunt Robert down and kill him, too.
Robert had been eleven. The funeral was a public spectacle — ‘the Death of Mecha Man’ on every fucking headline, every newsletter, every magazine, speculation on why ‘Elliot Connors, notable ally of the Brave Brigade and technological genius,’ would kill Mecha Man in cold blood. It’d taken hours for Robert to stop seeing white spots from all the camera flashes.
Replacing his father as Mecha Man was easier than he’d thought it would be. Chase, good as a babysitter as he usually was, was barely home — with Mecha Man gone, the Brave Brigade was down one of its core heroes, forcing everyone to pull double duty and leaving Robert alone for most of the summer.
Every last one of his waking hours were spent on the suit. Practicing, re-learning the mechanics, tearing the mech apart over and over again until he could build the damn thing in his sleep, his summer turned to a blur of machinery and gunmetal-blue steel. His twelfth birthday came and went. Chase brought him a cupcake with a little blue Mecha Man on the top and a new sketchbook, smile stretched too thin and eyes too dark.
“Happy birthday, kid,” Chase’d said, before tossing a small pile of Twinkies into Robert’s lap. “I know this was you and your dad’s thing, but I figure we can’t break tradition, yeah?”
Robert hadn’t needed to count to know there’s fourteen. One for each year he’d turned, and two to split with Dad, but Dad’s fucking dead.
Something in him broke.
Chase’d ended up holding him for hours, Twinkies crushed between their laps while Robert shrieked and wailed, sobbing until he’d reduced himself to ugly, ragged hiccups. He’d been able to feel Chase crying into his hair, and that’d only made him cry harder. By the time Robert had exhausted himself, Chase’s shirt had been a snotty, damp mess.
He snuck out in the suit two days later and stopped a bank robbery. Chase tore his ass to shreds, but didn’t stop him. There were rules, though. Robert could go on missions, sure, but only with someone from the Brave Brigade babysitting him, which was a stupid fucking rule. Dad hadn’t needed babysitters when he’d broken half his ribs — why the fuck did Robert?
The rule went to shit by the time Robert was fourteen. Most of the Brave Brigade left, numbers whittling down until it was just Chase and Robert, and nobody could stop Robert from going out whenever he wanted anymore. His first public appearance was at fifteen, when he looked enough like his dad to pass as an adult.
When Robert turned seventeen, he disappeared from Chase’s radar.
Then Robert turns twenty-six. All he’s got left are the Mecha Man suit, seasonal depression, a dog that he found inside a dumpster two years ago, and a picture of Shroud on a board. He’s stabbed a blood-red pin stabbed between Shroud’s eyes. There’s second jabbed into his heart, and a third in his chest.
He can’t remember his father’s face anymore, but he sure as hell remembers the tang of blood on his lips, knees digging into ruined carpet and his socks soaking through with gore. He doesn’t remember his father’s face, but he remembers watching him die. He leaves his apartment, Beef napping on a pillow and lights turned off, Astral pulse in one hand and keys in the other, and goes to kill Shroud.
Robert wakes up in a hospital five months later. The mech’s been destroyed, fizzled out by the bomb, and so has most of Robert’s nervous system. The legacy of Mecha Man is dead.
So much for being more than a suit.